Friday, November 1, 2013

The inspirational video: "Why I dance... Pourquoi je danse..."

A friend of mine, who is an avid belly dancer in Toronto, recently posted a video on her Facebook page entitled: "Why I dance... Pourquoi je danse...". The video is from the Ontario Arts Council (a government agency), which is why it's in both English and French.

I found it very inspiring. If you're not a dancer yourself, what's said in this video might not move you to the same degree that it did me and if that's the case, don't worry about it. But if you are a dancer of some kind... Well, I certainly can't speak for everybody, but when I watched this, I know I have personally felt just about every single thing the different people described at some point or another. So I felt like this video was speaking directly to me.

If you don't have time to watch, let me sum it up a little:
* I feel really great when I'm dancing
* It lets me be free
* It lifts my spirits and makes me happy
* Grateful to be able to move my body
* Makes me feel joyous, like I have real joy in my life
* Takes me to another world where there are no troubles, no worries
* Makes me feel so alive, my spirit is overwhelmed with joy
* Feel like a kid again
* A sense that it's a natural part of life
* You hear music and it's instinctual

You get the idea... My favorite though, is the woman who says, "It's really hard to answer why I'm dancing...why do you breathe?".

Like I said, I felt like this video was directed at me because all of those things in that list are true. And my friend, the belly dancer, I can't say for sure, but I imagine that she felt similarly since she took the time to post the video up to Facebook. These things are true for us both and yet we both do very different styles of dance. I guess some things are universal. I'm going to add what you see to the left, "Dance enables you to find yourself and lose yourself at the same time." If I had to sum up why I do Zumba in only one sentence, that would be it.

It's a question today: What brings you joy? What frees you? Okay that was really two questions...but they're worth thinking about. Especially if you can't pull out an answer in 15 seconds or less.